The Phenomenal Tubey Magic of Desperado

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Eagles Available Now

Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series. Here are some albums currently on our site with similar track by track breakdowns.

This is the second-best sounding Eagles record of all time, no doubt thanks to the engineering of our man Glyn Johns.  In case you don’t know, the best sound on any Eagles record is found on the first album.

It’s a Top Ten rock and pop title and as Tubey Magical a rock record as you will ever hear.

A True Super Disc (Second Only to the First Album in that Respect)

Of course, the best sound on any Eagles record is found on the first album. For whatever reason, that record was left off the TAS super disc list, even though we feel that both musically and sonically it beats this one by a bit.

On the TAS Super Disc list, Harry Pearson recommends the British SYL pressings for this album. SYL pressings can sound very good; in fact, one of the top copies from our most recent shootout was SYL. A bit of a surprise since our champion for both sides during the last shootout was domestic.

Does that mean the best domestics will always beat the best SYL pressings? Not at all. Only critical listening can separate the superb pressings from the typical ones. After playing more than a dozen copies of this album this week, we can definitively tell you that there are far more mediocre copies of this record — both domestic and import — than truly exceptional ones. The typical pressing of this album, whether the domestic or SYL, falls far short of belonging on a Super disc list.

There are killer domestic copies and killer SYL imports out there, and the only way to know which ones sound good is to collect ’em, clean ’em, and play ’em. Remember: TAS list doesn’t guarantee great sound, but Better Records does — if you don’t think a record sounds as good as we’ve stated, we’ll always happily take that record back and refund your money. Good luck getting ol’ Harry to send you a check when the TAS-approved pressings you pick up don’t deliver.

Side One

Doolin-Dalton

This wonderful song is a great test track for side one. Most pressings of this album tend to be dark and lack extension up top. When you have no real top end, space, detail and resolution suffer greatly. You need to be able to appreciate each of the stringed instruments being played — guitar, banjo, dobro — and the top end needs to be extended and correct for you to do that. (more…)

Simon and Garfunkel – Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

More Folk Rock

  • A Parsley, Sage… like you’ve never heard, with a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side one of this vintage Stereo 360 pressing
  • Their best recording, a Top 100 album and a Demo Disc for Tubey Magical voices and guitars
  • Exceptionally smooth, present, breathy vocals – this is the sound we love here at Better Records
  • Having played them by the hundreds, we’ve found that midrange presence and resolution are precisely what go missing on the modern Heavy Vinyl reissue, and that if those qualities are important to you, vintage vinyl is the only solution to your problem
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…an achievement akin to the Beatles’ Revolver or the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album, and just as personal and pointed as either of those records at their respective bests.”
  • Fans of this folky duo should definitely find a place for this 1966 release, which is also their best sounding album

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Prokofiev / Lt. Kije (45 RPM)

More Orchestral Spectaculars

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides, this Japanese import copy is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other recording of Lt. Kije you’ve heard – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This wonderful LP boasts our favorite performance for this popular 20th century work
  • Big, clear, present and transparent, with a huge bottom end, you better believe that this is some Demo Disc sound
  • When the brass is the way it is here – rich and clear, not thin and shrill – you have yourself a top quality DG pressing

*NOTE: There is a mark that plays 18 times (10 moderate, 8 light) at the start of side 1. There is also a mark that plays 7 times at a moderate level at the end of side 2.

This Japanese 45 RPM remastering of our favorite recording of Prokofiev’s wonderful Lt. Kije Suite has DEMONSTRATION QUALITY SOUND. For starters, there are very few records with dynamics comparable to these. Since this is my favorite performance of all time, I can’t recommend the record any more highly.

Once the needle has dropped you will quickly forget about the sound and simply find yourself in the presence of some of the greatest musicians of their generation captured on some of the greatest analog recordings of all time.

This pressing fulfills the promise of the 45 RPM cutting speed so much in vogue these days. We had a pile of these 45s to play through. When we came upon this one halfway through our shootout, it was so big, so clear, so dynamic, so energetic, so extended on the top and bottom, we almost could not believe what we were hearing, especially compared to the others copies we played. There are very few records with dynamics that can compare with these.

The bass drum (drums?) here must be heard to be believed. We know of no Golden Age recording with as believable a presentation of the instrument as this. The drum is clearly and precisely located at the back of the stage. Even better, it’s as huge and powerful and room-filling as it would have been had you attended the session yourself. That’s our idea of hi-fidelity here at Better Records!

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Listening in Depth to Deceptive Bends

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of 10cc Available Now

If you are interested in digging deeper, our listening in depth commentaries have extensive track by track breakdowns for some of the better-known albums we’ve done multiple shootouts for.

Side One

Good Morning Judge

There’s a wonderful guitar duel in this song, but notice how the guitar in the right channel is softer than the one in the left. It’s the same way on every copy we played, so it must be that way on the tape. The guitar in the left channel is louder so it wins.

The Things We Do for Love

A big hit for the band on both sides of the pond, and as such, there’s always a touch of radio EQ to the lead vocals on this track. If you have an suitably transparent copy you’ll be able to hear that the background vocals actually sound much more natural. They’re tonally correct, assuming your copy is right enough in the first place to let you hear it.

Marriage Bureau Rendezvous

This track has wonderful Tubey Magical Tillermanesque guitars. They sound out of this world on a copy with the kind of clarity and sweetness found on the best pressings.

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Avoid the Tan Labels and Non-TML Pressings for Nilsson Schmilsson

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Harry Nilsson Available Now

Not that we would ever claim that TML in the dead wax guarantees good sound.

Side two of our tan label copy below was passable, but sonically that’s a very long way from the top copies we played, which of course were all TML, with lots of different stampers — none of which we are likely to reveal, now or in the future, for reasons we are sure you understand.

Anyone who buys one of our White Hot Stamper copies will definitely know, but we only find a couple of those every few years, as this is not a shootout that’s been easy to do for a very long time.

(Recently we started revealing some of the best stamper numbers we’d discovered in our shootouts to date, and we hope to spill the beans on many more in the coming years. In addition, we’ve always been comfortable talking about the stampers for titles we keep a mystery. That information won’t help you find your own Hot Stamper pressings, but the stamper sheets we publish might just help you appreciate how unhelpful knowing the “right” stampers actually turns out to be much of the time.

Make sure your equipment is tuned up and the electricity is good before you get anywhere near a pressing of this album.

Big production pop like this is hard to pull off. Harry did an amazing job, but the recording is not perfect judging by the dozen or so copies I played this week and the scores I’ve suffered through before.

Nilsson Schmilsson is an album we think we know well, one that checks off a number of important boxes for us here at Better Records:

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Prokofiev / Scythian Suite and Lt. Kije – Abbado

More of the Music of Prokofiev

  • Boasting KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from first note to last, this pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other recording of these orchestral spectaculars you’ve heard – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • This wonderful LP boasts our favorite performances for both of these popular 20th century works
  • Big, clear, present and transparent, with a huge bottom end, you better believe that this is some Demo Disc sound
  • When the brass is the way it is here – rich and clear, not thin and shrill – you have yourself a top quality DG pressing

With huge amounts of hall space, weight and energy, this is Demo Disc quality sound by any standard. Once the needle has dropped you will quickly forget about the sound and simply find yourself in the presence of some of the greatest musicians of their generation captured on some of the greatest analog recordings of all time.

The bass drum (drums?) here must be heard to be believed. We know of no Golden Age recording with as believable a presentation of the instrument as this. The drum is clearly and precisely located at the back of the stage. Even better, it’s as huge and powerful and room-filling as it would have been had you attended the session yourself. That’s our idea of hi-fidelity here at Better Records! Since this is my favorite performance of all time, I can’t recommend the record any more highly.

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Jimi Hendrix – The Cry of Love

More of the Music of Jimi Hendrix

  • With excellent Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them from start to finish, this copy is guaranteed to handily beat any other The Cry of Love you’ve heard – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Big, bold Hendrix sound – powerful energy and presence with the size and space of a fresh analog tape (particularly on side one)
  • The first and probably best of the posthumous Hendrix albums, with top tracks including “Angel,” “Ezy Rider,” “Freedom,” “Drifting” and more
  • VH1 called it “the greatest posthumous classic rock record of all time” and they just might be right

With Eddie Kramer and Robert Ludwig on the payroll, doesn’t this record have to be spectacular? Good, yes, but spectacular? Not really. Some copies just don’t rock, and those copies lose a huge number of points for that shortcoming, especially on a Monster Rock record such as this.

Some are leaned out, some have no real top end — as Murphy’s Law makes clear, if something can go wrong it will go wrong.

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With a Little Help From My Friends – A Masterpiece of Blue Eyed Soul

Hot Stamper Pressings of Classic Rock Albums Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This is an old commentary from 2017 for With a Little Help from My Friends. We think it holds up just fine — wouldn’t change a thing.

This album may be a classic of Blue Eyed Soul, and Cocker hard to beat, but it is very hard to find in clean condition. Iit should be more popular with audiophiles, but for whatever reason it isn’t, which means we can only spend a limited amount of time and money finding and buying them for our shootouts knowing that many copies will be too noisy to sell.

We did our last shootout in 2025, but our next one will probably be many years from now.

We just finished our first shootout in over FIVE [2012 or so] years for the album and were SHOCKED by how amazing the best copies can sound, even better than we remember them from last time around. Turn this one up good and loud and you’ll have Joe Cocker in all his raspy glory belting out With A Little Help From My Friends right in your very own listening room!

Blue-Eyed Soul doesn’t get much better than this. Cocker and his band chose SUPERB material for this album, including Dave Mason’s Feelin’ Alright; two of Dylan’s best, Just Like A Woman and I Shall Be Released; and of course the wonderful title track by no less than Joe’s fellow Brits Lennon and McCartney. The backing band features many great musicians including giants such as Jimmy Page and Stevie Winwood. No one’s making records like this anymore, not with this kind of musical and songwriting talent anyway.

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The Recordings of Steely Dan – These Two Didn’t Make the Grade

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

Gold, the album on the left, is from 1982 and was mastered by Robert Ludwig. It’s an OK record, nothing more, and offers few of the thrills that the real albums do when they’ve been mastered and pressed right. (To my knowledge, never by Robert Ludwig.)

The soundtrack album below might interest collectors, but it has forgettable music with barely passable sound. Steely Dan is one of our favorite bands here at Better Records. This is not their best work.

We’ve written more about their albums than any other group’s outside of The Beatles, with more than 60 reviews and commentaries to date.

Our advice: Stick with the seven real albums that were released between 1972 and 1980. Each and every one of them is a brilliant work of art in its own way. For audiophiles, it just doesn’t get any better than Steely Dan.

Here is where it all started

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Grand Funk – We’re An American Band

More Rock Classics

  • A vintage yellow vinyl pressing that earned solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER from start to finish
  • Both sides are full-bodied, lively and present, with a solid bottom end
  • More important, here is all the rock and roll energy that would simply be missing in action on any reissue made these days
  • It’s tough to find good Grand Funk sound on audiophile-quality playing surfaces, but these sides did the trick
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Sonically, the record was sharp and detailed and the band’s playing was far tighter and more accomplished… The album’s title song, an autobiographical account of life on the road written and sung by Brewer, was released in advance of the album and became a gold-selling number one hit, Grand Funk’s first really successful single.”
  • If you’re a fan of the band, this title from 1973 is clearly one of their best, and unquestionably one of their best sounding

If you don’t already know, take our word for it: not many copies of this record will have much in the way of good sound. Grand Funk was not a band marketed to audiophiles. Their recordings tend to be crude and compressed, more radio-friendly than home-stereo-friendly.

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